‘Cats Corner is the official blog for the Tri-City ValleyCats, Short Season Single-A affiliate of the Houston Astros, and member of the historic New York-Penn League. 'Cats Corner consistently ranks as one of the top 50 professional blogs on the MLB.com network. With game and promotional recaps, team analysis and more, 'Cats Corner is ValleyCats fans #1 source for information.

Notebook: Carlos Quevedo is Cliff Lee

Didn’t get to finish this as quickly as I wanted, so it’s a little dated now. Tonight’s notebook should be up around the usual time tomorrow.

The ‘Cats continue to have absolutely no success at bringing runners home – they’re 4-for-25 with RISP in two games this series, stranding 11 runners each game. I remain hopeful that this is just bad luck, and the team will start to convert more hits into runs soon.

Well, that correction came, and it came quickly. The ValleyCats scored 10 runs in the first two innings, going 6-for-9 with RISP. They only left four runners on base for the game. The nine hits was actually right at where they had been all series, but with eight of them in the first two innings, they were able to convert them into many more runs than usual.

Now, just as the ‘Cats were bound to start driving in more runners after their slow start, they also won’t keep up this pace – I can guarantee they won’t go 9-for-14 with runners on base again tonight. But hopefully a few more of those baserunners will be driven in, and hopefully a few more of those close losses will become close victories.

Carlos Quevedo is Cliff Lee. Quevedo handed out a five-pitch walk to PJ Polk, which was unusual – it was his first walk of the season in 16.1 innings. But he certainly found his groove after that; he didn’t throw another ball that inning, and didn’t get to another three-ball count all night.

Quevedo now leads the New York-Penn League with 22 strikeouts, and has just the one walk on the season. That is insane. (Lee currently boasts a 15.60 K/BB ratio for the Mariners, which would be the best mark ever if he maintains it for the full season.) I love watching the way he attacks hitters, and he’s been very successful with it so far, holding a 2.01 ERA. The only disappointment is that, at this rate, Houston’s not going to keep him in the NYPL all year.

The righty struggled a bit in the first, leaving a lot of balls up in the zone. Alex Nunez and Josh Ashenbrenner each hit a fastball hard to center, but Dan Adamson tracked them both down. Julio Rodriguez got a soft line drive hit to right, but a pair of 83-mph changeups fanned James Robbins*.

*Robbins was lighting up the park in batting practice – he took three consecutive pitches over the wall, reaching the third fence in right field with the first one.

Quevedo again sat 88-90 mph* with his fastball, and settled down after the first inning. He gave up a cheap single to Matt Perry, a lazy opposite-field fly ball that just fell inside the line. He got Brett Anderson to hit a grounder to second that looked like it might erase Perry, but the ‘Cats could not complete the double play. two pitches later, Quevedo induced the same from Les Smith, getting out of the inning with a second 4-6-3.

*For those of you who are new or may have forgotten, all reported velocities are from the stadium gun. But I have seen no reason to doubt its accuracy so far – obvious misreads such as 51-mph fastballs aside, pitchers are hitting their expected ranges.

A pair of singles to lead off the fourth led to two runs, one earned, but that was all the Tigers could get off Quevedo. The Venezuelan native flew through six innings on 71 pitches – throwing single digits in three differnt frames – to notch yet another quality start.

Clemente Mendoza pitched well against the ‘Cats on Opening Day, but Tri-City sure figured him out the second time around. He allowed nine hits at The Joe two weeks ago, but limited the damage to just three runs. On Saturday, he wasn’t so lucky. The ValleyCats tagged him for nine runs on seven hits, three walks and a hit batsman. After a four-pitch walk for Orloff, Kik&eacute Hernandez drove a fly ball to the wall in left-center – his third first-inning double in as many games. With the bases loaded, Tyler Burnett followed with a double that brought home two more.

I’m not sure if it was because he was spooked by Oscar Figueroa’s game-changing out at the plate the night before or because the game was a blowout quickly, but Jim Pankovits was almost comically gun-shy with runners rounding third last night. (I’m leaning towards the latter – he did send Orloff home from first on Kik&eacute’s double.) Ben Heath could have easily scored from first on Burnett’s double in the first inning. The next inning Heath only advanced from second to third on Burnett’s second two-bagger; he got a poor read and was tagging up from second, but still would have likely made it home.

The most notable example came earlier that inning, on Heath’s cracked-bat single down the right-field line. Hernandez could have walked home from third, but Pankovits put up the stop sign; Kik&eacute didn’t see it until he was 50 feet from the plate. He dutifully stopped, but had nowhere to return, as Mike Kvasnicka was already standing on third base. Fortunately for the ‘Cats, the relay throw home bounced off the catcher’s glove 40 feet from the plate, allowing both Hernandez and Kvasnicka to score – it was that kind of night.

Mendoza’s night mercifully ended after a Dan Adamson sacrifice fly in the second inning, but Adam Bailey had one more statement to make. He took Logan Hoch’s second pitch some 400 feet to right field, landing it just in front of the OTB sign.

The ‘Cats sent all nine hitters to the plate in the first and second innings, but Hoch and Drew Gagnier shut them down after that, retiring 15 consecutive batters. It’s easy to give up on plate appearances when you have a ten-run lead, so there’s probably not a whole lot to say about that. There were a lot of strikeouts in the mix (10 for the game), which is not what one usually sees from this offense.

Chris Blazek threw a pair of scoreless innings, sitting 87-89 as usual. He went deep into counts but located well, hitting or just missing the corner with almost every pitch. He threw a dirty 80-mph changeup to the righty Anderson but ended up walking him; two batters later, he fanned righty Londell Taylor with a 78-mph one.

Michael Ness was called on for the final inning, allowing a groundball single but no other trouble. He fanned Les Smith with an 88-mph fastball to seal the 10-2 victory.

Radio broadcaster and fellow ‘Cats Corner blogger Evan Valenti may want to forego his budding career in broadcast journalism and move into something more along the lines of being a psychic. We were discussing the crowd size between innings at some point, and Evan threw out the number 4,525. Some other members of the ‘Cats staff who shall remain nameless (i.e., not me) mocked that estimate as optimistic. We got the official number an inning or so later, and it was…4,525 exactly.

Adam Bailey, on the other hand, may want to work on his counting skills. While being interviewed for the crowd on the field after the game, Bailey said, “…it’s nice to finally win two games in a row.” As nice as the win was – it marked the first time Tri-City had won a series – it did not change the fact that the ‘Cats lost their previous game 5-4. (The ValleyCats did win on Sunday to actually get that elusive back-to-back victory, so I feel a little better ragging on Bailey for it.)

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